DR. SUN YAT SEN
The wax model on view at Madame Tussaud’s of the first President of the Chinese Republic.
When the hero of this adventure visited Madame Tussaud’s on the Sunday morning in question to see his model, I wondered what his reason could be, and asked myself whether it had anything to do with the adapting of his disguise, while travelling from this country to China, at a time when his life must have been in danger.
Perhaps, after all, it was nothing more than the natural curiosity which attracts people whose portraits have been recently added to come and see them. The Eastern mind may not differ from the Western in this very human respect.
Touching and dramatic in the extreme was the incident which accompanied the unveiling of the tableau representing the Gordon Highlanders storming the Heights of Dargai. Lieutenant-Colonel Mathias’s words were on all lips at the time:
“That position must be taken at any cost; the Gordon Highlanders will take it.”
Mrs. Mathias was present with her son and daughter at the supper we gave to celebrate the event, and a piper played “The Cock of the North” to recall the deed of the wounded piper who fired his comrades on to victory and was awarded the V.C. When his father’s words were recited, young Mathias sprang to his feet and thrilled all present by saluting in true military fashion.
One of the brightest of red-letter days in Madame Tussaud’s romantic story was the 24th of January, 1907, when Sir William Treloar, “the children’s Mayor,” accompanied by several local Mayors, drove to the Exhibition in all the panoply of civic state to give éclat to the visit of fifteen hundred boys and girls of the poorest of the poor, whom we made our guests.
